An Ecstatic Safari Told by Ella

Hi! Last Friday, my cousin, Imri Marcus, came to visit us in Cape Town from Israel. Before he arrived, Ofer and I baked a gluten-free (he’s gluten-free) tahini cake for him (and cuz we felt like it :-)). We bought some edible silver glitter, strawberries, and powdered sugar to put on the cake. Before we went out for dinner at Camps Bay (a nice beach neighborhood) we ate the cake… Probably not the best idea as we ate the rest of it after dinner too… Anyway, the next day we went to the local farmer’s market. They had great food, and among other things, I ate biltong (basically South African beef jerky), grilled mushrooms, samosas, and I sampled vinegar!! After snacking at the farmer’s market we all walked to the V&A Waterfront intending to get some cheese I like at one of the stores. However, as we went to where the Gourmet Pantry is usually set up I was disappointed to see that the cheese part of the booth was gone. We then took a cable car to the top of Table Mountain, one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature. On the top, (no surprise) we found another colony of Marvins! These were the laziest ones we had seen yet, as they lounged right on the edge of the cliff-face. We hiked along the rocks for a while, but when we saw how long the line to get back to the cable cars was we decided to stay and have lunch. That night we went to a local hub called Mojo’s where different vendors sell food, so there’s something for everyone. We eat there quite often. We woke up early the next morning in order to get to the airport so that we could fly to Kruger National Park for our safari. I have to mention this because it’s awesome, but Imri bought us really cool leather passport cases (just to clarify, he came on safari with us). Mine has a beautiful multi-colored heterochromia-ed lion on the front. Anywho, when we landed at the Johannesburg (Kruger Park) airport, we ate breakfast/brunch and drove to the park. We hopped into a jeep and within minutes saw a lioness stalking some impalas, small deer-like creatures, but we didn’t see much more than her head. The rest of the day we saw many common animals which I will list now (these are also common animals from the rest of the week, but I wanted to put them all in one place). We saw chacma baboons, vervet monkeys, giraffes, warthogs, African elephants, bush pigs, Burchell’s zebras, elands, greater kudus, roan antelopes, sable antelopes, African buffalos, nyalas, waterbucks, blue wildebeests, common reedbucks, bushbucks, impalas, water mongooses, banded mongooses, slender mongooses, dwarf mongooses, white-tailed mongooses, tree squirrels, ostriches, dwarf geckos, and crocodiles. When the sun began to descend, our guide said that it was “Leopard o’clock” and sure enough my cousin Imri saw a leopard!

It was amazing! The leopard was really close to the road, which is quite unusual, and there were no other cars around so we got to experience it by ourselves. Soon after this unique sighting, we headed to our campsite inside the park. We had little huts to sleep in and I shared mine with Asher. After eating dinner at a restaurant at the camp, we got ready for bed. However, Asher and I were bored and there was a Bible in the room so we started to read it. Therefore, I may have accidentally kind of hit my roommate with the Bible on the nose. The next day we woke up at 4:50 am and were at the gate at 5:30 am. We decided to get our Uno game in case we had time for a relaxed lunch, so I ran back to my hut but got lost on the way back. I just have to say, that place was enormous. There were restaurants, stores, a gas station, and hundreds of huts. When I got back to the jeep, we waited a few minutes until the rangers opened the gates and then drove through. We saw some more animals, and then we saw another leopard!

It was right by the road, even closer than the leopard from the night before, and ended up walking and strutting around in front of us and crossing the road in front of the jeep. We drove around for a while until we saw some white rhinos. Later in the day, our guide took us to a place where he knew there were some hyena dens. As we drove along, we saw the hyenas! There was a mother hyena, a young hyena, and two baby hyenas that were born so recently that they didn’t have spots yet! Hyenas have such a bad name, but they are really noble animals (it doesn’t hurt that they’re adorable!).

After the excitement of the hyenas, we saw more amazing things. Among them, lions! We saw nine lions, male and female, lounging on the side of the road. They were large, even though we could see their ribs because it’s the end of the dry season, and very intimidating. They, however, simply lay there oblivious to us and letting us “bask in their glory”.

We stayed there for a while and then drove to lunch overlooking a small lake and some marsh where there were elephants. There were vivid blue starling birds everywhere. After seeing some more animals after lunch, we saw another pack of lions on the road again, even closer. There were eleven of them and they sat down right in the middle of the road, literally stopping traffic. They walked around and played and then we left. On the way back to the huts we saw more animals and a baby giraffe. That night we had a barbecue and looked at the stars. We woke up at the same time the next morning and went to look at the hyenas again. This time, we found another family in their den. There was one mother, three newborns, two really young ones, two young ones, and one teenage one, all equally cute. Then, we saw a wild dog. This doesn’t seem cool, but they’re actually really rare and hard to spot. There are only 325 in Kruger Park and Kruger Park is 19485 km2.

We then drove off to find a cheetah, but it was a false alarm. We drove to the airport and flew back to Cape Town where we started writing our blog posts and went to sleep. The next day we started working on our online homework. I forgot to mention this earlier, but most of the civilian cars we saw on the road were white. I’ve seen this all around South Africa, but it really came to my attention here. It got to the points where Asher and I would make bets on what color the next car would be, and it would almost always be white. If it wasn’t white it was silver and if it wasn’t silver it was red or blue. The entire time I was trying to figure out why white is such a popular car color here. Please write in the comments if you have any ideas because I am genuinely curious (and I really have no clue as to the answer).

Ella

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